Honor the lessons of parents and culture.

“In my journey to become a pilot and build businesses, I have found that two key lessons that I learned from my parents of two different cultures applied to every aspect of my life. It is important to reflect and acknowledge how the valuable lessons taught to us by our parents can apply to every aspect of our lives, not just the obvious ones.”

Lars Helgeson

The story of my business starts back in 1997, when I walked into a bookstore to get a better understanding of the Internet. At the time, I was in the Air Force, and knew I didn’t want to work for a huge organization and be a cog in a massive, bureaucratic machine. I figured if I could figure out how this new medium worked, I might be able to start a business with it. I picked up a book called “Teach Yourself CGI Programming In A Week”, and proceeded to power through basic programs built in a language called Perl. From there, I worked with the man who would become by business partner for the next 15 years to build a searchable database of fine art. That company eventually folded, but the lessons we learned took us to our next ventures. Not every idea we had came to fruition, but each try brought us closer to the platform that evolved into GreenRope, our flagship CRM and marketing automation platform.